Problem statement

• Rural, low-income students are being systematically shut out of STEM professions. An undergraduate education in STEM has been shown to lead to a more than 22% increase in annual earnings for Indian students when compared to other disciplines. Unfortunately, low-income rural students are more than 7 times less likely to qualify than students in urban schools (girls are more than 3 times less likely to qualify). Rural areas have fewer high-quality schools, students have no role models who have succeeded before them and high-performing students are often isolated in small villages unable to access quality test preparation.

• There are ~300,000 seats in the top 15% of professional STEM undergraduate programs each year. Graduates of these colleges have ~4x the placement rates (90%) and >2x the median starting salary of graduates from other colleges.
• National entrance tests like IIT-JEE act as gatekeepers to admission into these colleges. There is intense competition for these seats with a national acceptance rate of <10% on entrance exams. These entrance exams require a strong foundation in advanced Math and Science and are biased towards students who can afford expensive test-preparation and study in premium private schools. In-person coaching for competitive exams costs ~ INR 95,000 per annum and online courses cost ~  INR 65,000 per annum.
• Unable to afford test preparation, most students from low-income families opt out of STEM based careers. Students from Government Schools are >7x less likely to top-15% STEM Courses.
• Women continue to be severely underrepresented in top 15% STEM colleges.  Women make up 51% of Science high-school graduates but only 30% of the applicants to the Engineering colleges. Worse still, women who apply are more than 2 times less likely to qualify into top 15% STEM courses.

Why Avanti

• Avanti’s program aims to create a level playing field for students from government schools aspiring for careers in STEM by providing them coaching to be accepted into India’s top STEM programs and succeed during their years in college. In addition, they receive intensive career mentorship allowing them to select pathways that match their academic learning level and interests to college courses they have a high chance of qualifying for.

• Avanti Fellows, is an academic partner to the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS).The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) are co-ed residential schools in every rural district of India. NVS runs 635 rural residential government schools across India (Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas or JNVs). Avanti has access to over 190 JNV schools across geographies in India. The schools are only open to students in rural districts and over 75% of all students are from the bottom quartile of the income pyramid. Through our projects, we run after-school programs blended learning and online programs that help more than 90% of all students access these courses and careers. On average, 65% of our students who attended the JEE Main qualified and 35% of the students who attended JEE Advanced qualified. On average, 90% of the students who attended NEET qualified. We have alumni working in organisations like Google, Microsoft, Infosys, Reliance, Tata Consultancy Services, the Indian Army and many other reputed organisations.

• Avanti's state partnerships across Delhi, Haryana and Tamil Nadu provides access to a large number of Grade 9 -12 students from low income communities (50% are girls). This increases its overall access and reach to 22 States and 7 Union Territories.

• Avanti offers a gamut of school-to-work transition programs ranging from online test preparation for STEM courses, Scholarship for higher education and girls leadership program to help the students from marginalised communities transform the cycle of poverty in a single generation.